Cross dyke

Interpretations of the reason for their construction vary and include their use as defensive earthworks, cattle droveways, trackways, territorial limits and internal boundaries; current theories favour the latter two uses.

[4] Archaeologist Andrew Fleming has suggested that the cross dykes of Yorkshire may have been Iron Age (c. 800 BC – AD 100) monuments designed to deter cattle raids.

[5] About 90 examples of cross dykes have been recorded in England,[6] although many more may have been lost to ploughing, or have been wrongly classified as "short linear earthworks".

[10] When built, univallate cross dykes would have consisted of a bare stone bank topped with a palisade, sometimes accompanied by a ditch.

[11] Cross dykes would have been larger when they were first built; in areas subject to cultivation the banks have eroded down to fill the ditches, in may cases leaving just a shallow linear depression in the ground.

At East Toft in North Yorkshire, 0.4 kilometres (0.25 mi) of the dyke's length has completely vanished due to ploughing.

Cross dykes situated on moorland often remain as notable earthworks, for example at Danby Rigg, also in North Yorkshire.

[11] In southern Wales, a series of cross dykes controlling the ridgelines around the Rhondda Valley have been dated to the 8th–9th centuries AD, in the Early Middle Ages.